SBL 2025: Boston
Nov 22-25, 2025
Biblical Performance Criticism investigates how meaning is made in communication events of biblical (and other) traditions involving a performer (e.g., lector, preacher, teacher), audience, tradition, situation, and media. Sessions in 2025 will focus on performance of apocalyptic literature (canonical and extra-canonical) and how embodiment and cultural memory shape the experience of meaning making. We will have three sessions and one networking meeting:
- A Joint Session with John’s Apocalypse and Cultural Contexts Ancient and Modern. There will be three performances of Revelation 13-14 (one in each language, English, ASL, and Spanish) and three respondents exploring how the embodiment and cultural memory shaped their experiences.
- A Joint Session with Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew on “Translation and Linguistic Issues in Apocalyptic Literature in Ancient Hebrew and Aramaic.” In recent years, questions have emerged on how to translate lexical, grammatical, and pragmatic issues in the Hebrew Bible, especially in the context of non-written domains.
- Biblical Performance Criticism: What is it? How to do it? Where is it going? Papers will introduce the current state of BPC to interested parties and new practitioners and engage long-time participants in discussion of the direction of BPC.
Networking Luncheon. In San Diego, the BYOL lunch on Monday was a great success and will be repeated to bring new and long-time students and scholars together.
Between Script and Scripture
Performance Criticism and Mark’s Characterization of the Disciples
by Zechariah Eberhart
(Brill, 2024)
This volume reimagines the first-century reception of the Gospel of Mark within a reconstructed (yet hypothetical) performance event. In particular, it considers the disciples' character and characterization through the lens of performance criticism. Questions concerning the characterization of the disciples have been relatively one-sided in New Testament scholarship, in favor of their negative characterization. This project demonstrates why such assumptions need not be necessary when we (re-)consider the oral/aural milieu in which the Gospel of Mark was first composed and received by its earliest audiences.
On Performance Criticism, Lived Religion, and the Hebrew Bible
by Shane M. Thompson
Currents in Biblical Research 2024, vol 22(3) 173–188
Abstract: This article provides an overview of the application of a performance criticism framework within scholarship on the Hebrew Bible. A natural progression from conversations concerning orality, performance studies allows for increased explication of the biblical texts, most notably pertaining to life, religion, and culture in ancient Israel. The addition of ‘lived religion’ through a performance studies lens advances the understanding of peoples and areas of life commonly deemed absent from the biblical record. Instead, they are present in the form of an audience witnessing or hearing the performances of, or contained within, these texts.
Video
Natural Performances with Artificial Intelligence
Using GPT for Scenes, Imagery, Focal Points and Emotion
Paper by Jonathan Robie and Discussion
A video of Jonathan Robie presenting his paper "Natural Performances with Artificial Intelligence: Using GPT for Scenes, Imagery, Focal Points and Emotion" with discussion following. Analyses of the Psalms referenced in the discussion may be found at https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1H8H6XvNSN20io2NbBDiQK4Q84g-TQm4z?usp=sharing
Oral Performance and the Veil of Text
Detextification, Paul's Letters, and the Test Case of Galatians 2-3
by Ben F. van Veen
(Pickwick, 2024)
It is now common opinion that the biblical documents functioned in an oral context dominated by the spoken word. The present study centres on the letters of Paul, especially Galatians, and addresses the complex relation between this functioning in the original oral setting and the daily praxis of current biblical scholarship in which these documents function as autonomous texts, detached from the context of its original oral delivery. It will be argued that in addition to the difference in media (oral performance there-and-then versus reading the text here-and-now) it is crucial to differentiate the mindsets involved. A highly literate reader in the present structures thought differently from someone in the past who is formed by oral-aural communication. The leading question of this investigation is: How can a biblical scholar here-and-now relate to the text of the letters of Paul (in a printed or digital version) in such a way that he or she can understand (in the typically accompanying highly literate mindset) how the apostle envisioned his original addressees to understand (in their rather unfamiliar oral mindset) the documented words in the event of delivery? It is argued that by textualizing history and historicizing text a detextification of our understanding of these ancient documents is possible. Two testcases of detextification are provided, viz. Gal 3.10-12, in which the presence of a self-evident and simple enthymematic (syllogistic) reasoning is put to the test, and Gal 2.18-20, in which it is argued that Paul counters the call to circumcision by his opponents by a recalling of the baptism of the Galatian converts.